Fear Itself
by WeBuiltThePyramids
Summary: Jane doesn't sleep. Not at first. Set post Blue Bird.


**I had this concept in my head the night after Blue Bird aired. But I wasn't sure how exactly to write it. It didn't really come to me until tonight. And I'm still not entirely sure I'm happy with it – probably partly because we won't know for months anything about Jane and Lisbon's relationship. But I feel that admitting he loves Lisbon won't heal Jane, not entirely, not at first, because he didn't tell Lisbon that loving her "scared" him. He used present tense. And I wanted to explore that.**

* * *

He doesn't sleep. Not at first.

"I meant what I said, every word of it," he'd told her back in the holding cell. That had made her happy. He liked that. He loved her, and that made her happy because she loved him. And he was happy, overjoyed, that not only had he fallen in love again, but that she felt just as he did.

But that wasn't all he'd said, that night on the airplane.

"The idea of letting anyone close to me is terrifying, for obvious reasons."

For years, Jane has, both openly and in secret, taunted people for irrational thought. For letting themselves believe something unlikely would in fact transpire. Deluded, he calls them. Ridiculous.

He supposes it is even more ridiculous to know that one had an irrational train of thought and not be able to help it.

But every night, every night since that wonderful afternoon where he and Lisbon had left the airport, driven back to that beach, and sat on the sand – his ankle would not have made walking very productive – to talk, to really, _really_ talk, he'd lain in fear that somehow, someone would take her away from him.

The first night they are together, Jane's bladder wakes him at four in the morning. He doesn't get up to relieve himself until she stirs, nearly paralyzed with fear at what he might return to find. On the third night, a tree outside the window taps against it as it sways with the breeze. Jane sits bolt upright, as alert as he's ever been. It takes several minutes for his heart rate to return to its normal rhythm.

_This is absurd,_ Jane tells himself. _Red John is dead._

He knows it. He'd strangled him, watched the long faceless man's life slip out of him. He knows there is no way Red John can hurt her.

But Angela was his first love. Charlotte his second.

Jane loves numbers, usually. He loves facts. He can recite the rivers of the world in order of length. He knows how many years it takes for cells to be replaced in the human body. He knows complex statistics about crime.

And he knows that, so far, people he loves – one hundred percent of the time – get murdered because of his love for them.

A week after Florida, she's not feeling well, wants to be alone, and sleeps at her place – there's still six days left on the lease – and the following morning she's late coming to work. He texts her three times with no response. Finally, convinced something has happened, he flees the fishbowl, already out of breath as he rounds the corner toward the parking lot-

-and comes face to face with her. She overslept, she explains, but she's feeling better. She looks at him, almost amused, at the relief on his face.

The following night, he dreams, and when he wakes up, he's drenched in sweat and his heart is pounding. He doesn't quite remember what his subconscious had done. He doesn't think it was a flashback, but he's not sure. With the way he's been these past few days, it wouldn't surprise him if he dreamed about leaving the room and hearing some object fall in the dark.

Lisbon stirs next to him. She shifts her weight slightly. He loves how relaxed she is, how content. The previous couple of weeks have been hard on her. Jane was so caught up in his own feelings, his own conflict, that he hadn't been able to see just how stressed she had been. How many times she had given him the opportunity, and how many times her hopes had been dashed when he'd brushed her prospective move off.

"_I kept looking...for a reason," _she'd said on the beach. _"To ask you again, what you thought of me leaving."_

"_I'm sorry,"_ he had told her. _"I'd convinced myself that he was best for you. To protect myself. And you from me."_

"_I told you a long time ago that I don't need saving."_

Lucky, he'd called it. He knows it's true. He could have lived out his life despising himself, living in that fear and self-loathing whats-his-name did, always regretting letting her go. He doesn't have to do that. Instead, he gets to make her laugh, morning, noon, and night. He gets to kiss her and put his hands through her hair. He gets to buy her things when it's not a special occasion. He gets to _see_ her, every day. He knows his fear is irrational – everything else aside, Lisbon _is_ a cop – and he knows that, with time, it will fade. It will follow the old Jane into the past.

He is lucky. For all those reasons, and many more. Including the fact that she tells him she's lucky, too.

They are lucky.

They are happy.

But sleep only comes for one of them. For now.

**I took the title from Franklin Roosevelt's speech where he says that the only thing we have to fear, is fear itself. **


End file.
